Big Campus, Big Data

A few reflections on an e-learning conference that I attended and presented at yesterday in Birmingham, hosted by a company named Talis that makes student-oriented learning tools. It was a really interesting programme, and I learned a lot – not just about e-pedagogies and emerging digital tools, but also about how university libraries work and the large-scale planning that goes on behind the scenes.

I’ll come back to that later, but the main thing I wanted to address is the huge conversation that was had throughout the day concerning student data and analytics. I make pretty heavy use of my university’s ‘virtual learning environment (VLE)’, i.e. online teaching platform, so I was already aware of the way these tools gather data on student activity. As an instructor I can readily see when students log into the VLE, how much time they spend on it, how many times they’ve posed in the discussion forums, how much time they spend watching lecture videos, how many of the readings they access…. The list goes on. And while some of this information can be useful, particularly if a student really goes off grid and we’re trying to figure out if s/he is making any contact with the course, for the most part I avoid looking at the data. This is because 1) I typically don’t have a specific question in mind when doing so and 2) I don’t think my students know that I can see this and I don’t know how I feel about that. It’s like looking in on someone through a two-way mirror when they don’t realise they’re being observed.

So the very interesting thing to emerge early in the conference yesterday (the very first session, in fact), and to keep coming up throughout the rest of the panels, was the fact that educators, librarians, HE/FE managers, commercial providers, you name it, are thinking more and more about this data, and how to collect, analyse, and use it. There’s clearly some powerful opportunities here. Student clicks on digitised reading lists can help libraries figure out how often certain books or articles are being accessed, and this in turn can help guide purchasing. Counting swipe card entries at the library can help us figure out periods of peak demand, and then tailor opening hours accordingly. Minutes watched in instructional videos can show us which recordings are finding an audience, and which are being overlooked. Data is of course a form of evidence, and evidence helps create usable knowledge.

So far, so good. All of this is pretty old hat and I hope and assume that we’ve already been doing some of this at my university for quite some time. The thing that caught me a little off guard, though, and that now has me thinking, is the fact that much of the data that people were talking about yesterday is de-aggregated and de-anonymised. It is individual-specific, and one of the many possible visions proposed is that we could call up a student’s record in our system and, alongside his/her photo, get a summary and visualisation of his/her digital learning activity. The fuzzy slide below shows one of a few examples I saw during the day of a single student profile – all the little graphs in it document things like a student’s swipe card usage, log ins to the university student system, log ins to the VLE, books and articles accessed – basically, anything that produces digital analytics.

Now after seeing all this, I realised that I was incredibly naive not to anticipate this sort of data collection and analysis. But, there you have it, I was. And while I do see the possibility for some of this analysis to be of benefit to students, I have reservations about tracking the activity of individuals and building it into their student records. One thing that I found encouraging was the fact that Jisc, the UK organisation dedicated to developing the digital potential of teaching and research in the country, has been consulting with the National Union of Students on an informed consent policy for students (and presumably something like this should be in the works for staff too, especially given the recent news about staff tracking at Univ. of Edinburgh?). But I couldn’t quite get a sense of how robust those conversations have been, or the extent to which they’re genuinely collaborative versus instrumental (my next step will be to find some time to read through Jisc’s code of practice on the topic, kindly tweeted by one of the delegates). I also wasn’t particularly impressed by the slightly flippant attitudes expressed in the more informal bits of some of the presentations, but as they were a bit more off-the-cuff I’ll avoid reading too much into them here.

A couple other observations from the day – first, that academics can be frustrating for library staff to work with, especially when they don’t fully think through the practical circumstances of education. There were several comments suggesting that we often just don’t get it – we assign obscure and difficult to find readings; we are over-precious about our teaching practices, sometimes to the detriment of students; we don’t make the time to work with colleagues in the library to set up a learning environment that benefits everyone. I think these are all fair criticisms, as long as we recognise that they’re not one-size-fits all. A lot of academics – most, even! – do care an awful lot about their students, even if they show it in different and at times inscrutable ways.

Which brings me to my second observation. There was quite a lot of comment about academics assigning readings that are not as accessible/affordable/scalable/popular as others, and some sense of frustration that they don’t take a more practical route. I can understand this, especially in huge lecture classes in which demand for key texts is going to be very high. But I also think it’s important that we remember that books aren’t always easily swappable ‘products’, with one working just as well as another. They are forms of knowledge, and sometimes very unique and inimitable forms at that, and it’s essential that we design our courses in a way that puts that knowledge first. Of course, if we really can’t find a way to create access to that knowledge for our students, then we need to find a different solution, which might mean a different book, or a single (and legally) digitised chapter of that book, or an apologetic notice to students at the start of the course that they’ll have to buy that book themselves. But it’s so important to me that we never start putting knowledge second, and tools and products first. Good news though – I think everyone I met and spoke to yesterday at the conference would agree. The more all parts of the university listen to one another, and work together, the better we’ll get at identifying and achieving our common goals.

Two final points before I finish, both with pictures. First, although I thought the topics and discussions at the conference were great, this event like so many would have really benefited from greater diversity in its plenary speakers. Of the 11 people I saw on the main stage, 10 were men.

And second, the final joy of the day was getting to go searching in the Library of Birmingham for the Shakespeare touchtable that our MAs helped create, and to spend more than a few minutes enjoying its delights. Brilliant work you guys!!

   

Shakespeare Pedagogy in the Digital Age

A question I was left pondering after part 1 of Shakespeare in the Digital World was whether or not digital research was inherently more or less social than its non-digital counterpart. Bruce Smith argued strongly that it was less social, less experiential, less time-bound–in a word, less human. But David McInnis also showed how fundamentally collaborative some digital projects are, and how this enables a form of international social and professional exchange that simply wouldn’t have been possible a few decades ago.

I bring up the social here because in part 2 of this book, which focuses on TEACHING, similar questions relating to digital interaction, sharing, and sociability make up a central theme. In his introduction to the section, Peter Kirwan points out how active, up on your feet, interactive approaches to Shakespeare have dominated many pedagogical discussions in recent years. ‘The focus on physical bodies, proximity and movement tends to gloss over the integration of new technologies’, he writes, ‘except when that technology reinforces the live classroom’ (p. 59). This recent emphasis in Shakespeare studies on pedagogy as a kind of theatre is interesting and provocative in and of itself (is your classroom ensemble-led, or more the director’s theatre variety?), but in this post I will restrict myself to saying a few words on these issues specifically in terms of the digital. I will keep it to a few words though, since one of the essays in the section is in fact by me and so to a large extent I’ve already said my piece on the subject, both in the essay itself and in a previous blog post here.

Sarah Grandage and Julie Sanders, Sheila Cavanagh and Kevin Quarmby, and Peter Kirwan himself have written the other essays in the section, and together we cover experiences relating to distance learning, blended classrooms, joint teaching via video conferencing, collaborative class wikis and Twitter hashtags, and new resources for teaching performance online. As I read the essays together I found myself underlining phrases like ‘experiential creativity’, ‘digital connectors’, ‘socializing practices’, and jotting down notes such as ‘social facilitation’, ‘experience, experiment’, ‘interactivity, engagement’. I suppose this emphasis on digital pedagogy as collaborative and social shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, given the fact that the Web 2.0 tools so frequently discussed in this section are essentially what we know as social media. But it is interesting, I think, to see how all of us have emphasized social liveness and communal exchange in our reflection, with the assertion very often being that not only can digital teaching be as social as its non-digital counterpart, it can sometimes be more so.

I think that’s right, but it’s an idea that is worth further consideration. In their discussion of joint teaching via Skype, Cavanagh and Quarmby explain how students recognized the authority and presence of the Skyped-in instructor as fully as they did the co-instructor that they knew in the flesh. ‘The virtual presence was, albeit unconsciously, fully integrated into the class psyche’ (p. 93). All of the essays, in one way or another, talk about habituation to the digital. That is–once we get used to using it and seeing it, it no longer becomes something that is different, or worryingly non-human. It is simply part of normal life. I am reminded, though, of Bruce Smith’s comment in part 1: ‘If I have learned anything since I started teaching in 1972, it is to distrust binaries … What is needed in every case is a third thing, a tertium quid, a synthesis that reconciles thesis and antithesis’ (p. 28). Leaving aside the question/joke of what Smith makes of binary code, I am left wondering what the third thing might be for digital sociability. It is certainly not inhuman or beyond the human–we are, after all, the agents (or subjects?) driving and making it–but neither is it a part of human experience and exchange as we’ve previously known it. What is the synthesis then that lies, unconsciously, in between?

Alongside the discussion of big questions like this one, the section offers a helpful range of practical ideas and tips that I’m sure I’ll be making use of in my own teaching. From performance resources available online, to how to create a sense of presence through the Skyped screen, to how to use a student-led wiki to fuel research, there’s lots to think about and work with here.

‘Digital Humanism’ by Oskari Niitamo

 

Teaching Shakespeare digitally

Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking at a symposium at the University of Birmingham on Shakespeare and education ‘in the age of digital humanities’. Sponsored by the British Shakespeare Association, it featured talks from Sarah Olive on the representation of Shakespeare and education on British television, Catherine Alexander on Shakespeare as a marker of cultural literacy, Abigail Rokison in conversation with Anthony Banks of the National Theatre’s learning department, Thea Buckley and Laura Nicklin (the organizers) on active approaches to teaching that they’ve learned about through recent workshops with Folger education and the like, and also a session with me on teaching and learning in the blended classroom.

My talk came from an essay I’ve written for the very recently published Shakespeare and the Digital World: Redefining Scholarship and Practice, edited by the wonderful Christie Carson and Pete Kirwan. The book looks at how digital technologies are shaping research, teaching, publication, and performance in Shakespeare studies. My chapter in the teaching section offers a critical reflection on distance learning education, looking specifically at how it works at the Shakespeare Institute. In lieu of an abstract, I thought I’d share the introduction to the essay below. The entire book is available both in paperback and as an ebook, so unlike many academic books it is actually affordable. And well worth a read I’d say.

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The Shakespeare Institute today.

Internal and External Shakespeare: Constructing the 21^st-Century Classroom

In 1951 Allardyce Nichol and the University of Birmingham established the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon, taking hold of a building called Mason Croft that had once belonged to a popular romance novelist named Marie Corelli and later served as an outpost for the British Council. Originally intended as an academic think tank for the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre – later to become the Royal Shakespeare Company – the newly established Shakespeare Institute soon made its presence known, hiring three founding Fellows (Reginald Foakes, Ernst Honigmann, and John Russell Brown), starting up Shakespeare Survey and the International Shakespeare Conference, acquiring the full microfilm collection of the English Short Title Catalogue, and opening its doors to postgraduate students wishing to study Shakespeare. More than sixty years later, despite major changes in the UK higher education, much about the original vision for the Shakespeare Institute has remained the same, not least its commitment to cultivating new generations of Shakespeare scholars, teachers, and practitioners through postgraduate teaching and research supervision. It remains an extremely tight-knit community, with students and academics travelling from all over the world to seek out a particular kind of intellectual and social experience that permeates the lecture hall, seminar rooms, library, and even gardens of Mason Croft. While the building hasn’t been used as a private residence since 1941, it still very much feels like a home.

Back when it was Marie Corelli’s house.

Given the fact that the Shakespeare Institute experience is so strongly rooted in the atmosphere and history of a particular physical place, it may perhaps seem like an unlikely candidate for expansion into digital learning and distance education. Some of the best things about our community are decidedly analogue – impromptu research conversations in the garden, weekly play readings of lesser-known Renaissance plays, and seminars on Shakespeare’s life and works that draw directly on the heritage and theatrical life of Stratford-upon-Avon. And yet, like all centres of learning, the Shakespeare Institute has developed with its times, not least in the area of responding to changing student needs. Stratford is a small town that can at times be difficult to get to, particularly for students hoping to combine their prospective studies with existing work commitments and family demands. In an effort to open up our community to this broader spectrum of students, we have since 2002 offered part-time, flexible master’s degrees in Shakespeare and Theatre, and then Shakespeare and Education, both of which have offered at least a partial distance learning pathway since 2004. While in the early years of these programmes most part-time students were taught on-site at Mason Croft through intensive study weekends and summer schools, and thus at different times than our ‘traditional’ students, the growth of our distance learning pathway over the past five years has, perhaps paradoxically, brought our on-site and off-site students into greater temporal alignment. ‘Internal’ and ‘external’ students enrolled in a course have the same readings, assignments, deadlines, and tutors; they study the material over the same period of time and their work is marked together, meaning that no intellectual or administrative distinction is made between them. In some instances distance students may attend some of the face-to-face seminars for a course that they are otherwise taking entirely online, and likewise on-site students may share ideas and readings in the course’s online classroom space, resulting in a truly blended mode of study.

Welcome to class.

This chapter reflects on the measures the Shakespeare Institute has taken to achieve this integration of internal and external learning, focusing in particular on the pedagogical principle of constructive alignment in the blended classroom. It argues that although many of the tools for on-site and virtual teaching may be different, the intellectual and pedagogical starting point should be the same: thoughtful consideration of what we want students to be able to ‘do’ with Shakespeare by the end of the course, and the steps we as instructors must take to facilitate this achievement. In this way, we welcome Leon Wieseltier’s recent defense of humanistic learning, and his associated plea to thinkers and educators to ‘[u]se new technologies for the old purposes.’[1] Of course, this isn’t to say that we don’t also value innovation in the classroom, but rather to suggest that the power of innovation, digital or otherwise, always emerges from a clear commitment to what learning means, not only practically but also philosophically. In the essay that follows I consider the principle of constructive alignment that underpins both our internal and external teaching, the teaching measures we have taken to achieve such aims in our blended classrooms, and the way in which such philosophical and practical approaches help lessen the ‘transactional’ divide in internal and external teaching and learning, even as our geographical spread increases.

[1] Leon Wieseltier, ‘Perhaps Culture is now the Counterculture: A Defense of the Humanities’, New Republic, 28 May 2013, http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113299/leon-wieseltier-commencement-speech-brandeis-university-2013?utm_campaign=tnr-daily-newsletter&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=8840083# [19 June 2013].

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If you’re interested in finding out more about studying by DL at the Shakespeare Institute, have a look at the two videos below, which give further information from an instructor point of view as well as a student one.